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A group trying to block former President Donald Trump from appearing on the ballot in all 50 states ramped up pressure on Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade during Thanksgiving week.Free Speech for People first contacted Griffin-Valade in July, less than two weeks into her term. Its latest letter asks Griffin-Valade to respond and indicate whether she’ll issue a temporary rule declaring Trump ineligible to appear on ballots in Oregon by Dec. 1.“Your oath to support the Constitution, and the weighty responsibility entrusted to you by Oregon voters as Secretary of State, impel you to exclude Mr. Trump’s name from...

Alabama's Supreme Court on Wednesday cleared the state to execute an inmate using nitrogen gas. The state's attorney general’s request for an execution warrant for Kenneth Eugene Smith was granted in a 6-2 decision by an all-Republican court. Last year, the Alabama Department of Corrections called off the execution of Smith when the people responsible for connecting two intravenous lines to him for lethal injection could not do so. While the ruling moves the state closer to becoming the first to attempt execution with nitrogen gas, there is likely to be additional legal dispute on the matter. Alabama joins Oklahoma...

Welcome to StudentAid.gov Student Loan Debt Relief Is Blocked Courts have issued orders blocking our student debt relief program. As a result, at this time, we are not accepting applications. We are seeking to overturn those orders. If you've already applied, we'll hold your application. Subscribe and check back here for updates. We will post information as soon as further updates are available.

Self-enforcing life rules….. 1. Law of Mechanical Repair - After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch and you'll have to pee. 2. Law of Gravity - Any tool, nut, bolt, screw, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible place in the universe. 3. Law of Probability - The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act. 4. Law of Random Numbers - If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal; someone always answers. 5. Variation Law - If you change lines (or traffic lanes),...

During a conversation with students in the United Kingdom, First Lady Michelle Obama told them that men were “useful” for promoting the idea of more education for girls. “We’ve got to change cultural norms too, that’s why work on the ground is so important” she explained. “We’ve got to send different messages about the importance of educating our girls.” She suggested that while boys and men were important, it was crucial for them to talk about the lack of education for girls around the world. “You know our sons are important, we love men, we all do, they’re good, they’re

The NRA, today's useful idiot In the June 21, 2013 Watchdog.org article, ‘Dems join NRA to push gun restrictions for mentally ill,” the author outlines the new alliance between the NRA and the Democrat Party of Florida. The article exposes the new liberal Trojan horse, i.e., “preventing firearms from falling into the hands of the mentally ill.” No matter how innocuous the attempt to legislate away guns from anyone may appear, mentally ill or otherwise; these assaults should be aggressively fought. This is particularly so for the organization entrusted with defending the most important of all our Amendments in the...

When a lobbyist for families of Newtown shooting victims called the office of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to set up a meeting, the first response was a standard D.C. offer. They could get a meeting with her staff, and a quick and simple “hello” from Collins herself, they were told. The families’ answer: not good enough. According to their lobbyists, the families have a rule against staff-only meetings: They won’t do them. They insist on sitting down with the senators themselves.

Warning to America's superrich: Think Occupy Wall Street disappeared in winter's cold? Wrong: The 99% just declared a new aggressive, covert special-ops war strategy to take back our democracy in 2012. No more peaceful tent encampments in parks. No more Mahatma Gandhi nice-guy stuff. Not enough. Escalation time. Wall Street, the superrich and their Washington lobbyists are tone deaf, blinded by greed, trapped in their post-2008 business-as-usual bubble. Warning; OWS tells us America's going to be shocked by not one but hundreds of wake-up calls in 2012. How? In a recent Washington Post column, OWS leaders say they are accelerating...

Academy award-winning actor Matt Damon said he is "so disgusted" with what's happening in Washington over the debt limit, claiming that the Tea Party is "willing to drive it all off a cliff" and adding that it's "criminal" the wealthy are not paying higher taxes. "I'm so disgusted man. I mean, no, I don't know what you do in the face of that kind of intransigence. You know, so my heart does go out to the President. He is dealing with a lot," Damon said in an exclusive interview at the "Save Our Schools March" in Washington, D.C. on Saturday....

"...Actor Sean Penn's days of writing for the San Francisco Chronicle may be over: The actor now calls the publication an "increasingly lamebrain paper." Penn offered the critique in a letter published Tuesday, written in response to a tongue-in-cheek article that focused on celebrity interest in Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. It listed a number of potential matchups between celebrities and dictators or other authoritarian figures. ...Penn objected to the characterization, saying Chavez is a democratically elected leader..."

...I reread " Ten Days That Shook the World," the famed account of the revolution by John Reed, the American journalist and fellow traveler. Then...last week's press reports of the recent encounter between Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan president, and Naomi Campbell...The Western weakness for other people's revolutionary violence, the belief in the glamour and benevolence of foreign dictators, and the insistence on seeing both through the prism of Western political debates, are still very much with us. ...Though better known for her taste in shoes than for her opinions about Latin American economics, Campbell nevertheless turned up in Caracas gushing...

Let's see if we can come up with some important priorities for the security of the United States and the growth of its economy. Well, number one is surely the protection the nation against any further attacks by Islamist fundamentalists. Clearly this has been successful to date. It will remain, however, a constant concern for decades to come. Another priority would be to insure that the nation continues to have the energy it requires to maintain and grow our thriving economy. We use a lot of electricity and our cars and trucks use a lot of fuel, as do our...

As a columnist, I'm often asked by aspiring young wordsmiths if they should follow their dreams and become writers. Typically I will invoke the sage advice of Matt Foley, the motivational speaker played by Chris Farley on "Saturday Night Live" in 1992. I like to lean forward and tell the kids: "You're not! Gonna amount! To Jack Squat!" Yes, mine is a hapless livelihood, using mere words to try to make the world a better place. Better to pursue law or medicine, I tell the students. One of my fruitless crusades has been advocating the abolition of the Electoral College....

While North Korea was gearing up to launch a long range missile and five rockets into the Sea of Japan this week, sending a grim message to the entire world, out at Saddleback Church Rick Warren was announcing that he will soon be bringing his message of purpose to North Korea where he reportedly will be addressing an audience of 15,000. “God is using Rick Warren to be a messenger of peace!” gushed one Saddleback member. There is great hope in Lake Forest that Rick Warren's message in that stadium will cause Kim Jong II to drop his nuclear purposes...

Passport plan won't better border security The Saratogian, 11/20/2005 Imagine having to show a passport to visit a friend or relative or go to a business luncheon. That's what residents along New York's northern border face because of the proposed Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. While a driver's license or birth certificate is all that's needed now, the initiative would require passports by 2008 at all land crossings into the United States. This is an effort to block terrorists, but it's a stumble in homeland security that ignores actual gaps in border protection. Terrorists tend not to bother with niceties such...

@TEOTD At The End Of The Day 14AA41 One for All and All for One 2B or not 2B To Be Or Not To Be 2NITE Tonight 411 it means: info 4ever Forever 86 Out Of or Over it A/S/L Age/Sex/Location AAAAA American Association Against Acronym Abuse AAF As A Friend AAK Asleep At Keyboard AAMOF As A Matter Of Fact AAMOI As A Matter Of Interest AAR8 At Any Rate AAS Alive And Smiling AATK Always At The Keyboard AAYF As Always, Your Friend AB Ass Backwards ABT2 About To ACD Alt Control Delete ACK Acknowledgement ADAD Another...

In the Atlantic Monthly a few years back, Robert D. Kaplan went to Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other failed jurisdictions of West Africa and concluded that many of the "citizens" of these "states," roaming the streets raping and killing, belonged to a phenomenon called "re-primitivized man." Anyone watching TV in recent days will have seen plenty of "re-primitivized man," not in Liberia or Somalia, but in Louisiana. Cops smashing the Wal-Mart DVD cabinet so they can get their share of the booty along with the rest of the looters, gangs firing on a children's hospital and on rescue helicopters, hurricane...

It’s safe to assume that the number one question asked at cocktail parties and on golf courses this weekend was who do you think “outed” CIA agent Valerie Plame. Likely, the answer depended on the recipient’s news source of choice. For example, some media outlets affirm that it was Karl Rove, President Bush’s Deputy Chief of Staff. In their view, Rove should either be fired, or resign. Conversely, other news divisions maintain that Rove didn’t actually violate any national security statutes given that he was first told of Plame’s CIA involvement by a reporter, and that Plame hadn’t been working...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

    John Kerry, Useful IdiotMark Alexander (archive)  September 24, 2004 | Print | Send "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents...." --James Madison Nineteenth-century historian Alexis de Tocqueville once observed, "Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." Tocqueville was commenting on liberty and free enterprise, American style, versus socialism as envisioned by emerging protagonists...